Start Up India: Oh, these obstinate obstacles!

I was intrigued by an un-English word from Amitabh Kant, the man behind the ‘Start Up India’ campaign. ‘We unobstacle’ was marked in bold on the podiumJanuary 23, 2016, 09:36 IST

By James Joseph

Saturday morning as I opened my Twitter box, I was intrigued by an un-English word from Amitabh Kant, the man behind the 'Start Up India' campaign. 'We unobstacle' was marked in bold on the podium the prime minister was going to speak from.

I had just cleared the last obstacle to receive the seed funding I secured 90 days ago from a 30-minute presentation. All I needed for the seed funding to be complete was to clear the paperwork every startup needs to clear at the beginning to receive money and sell stuff. In my case, that meant three critical things: company registration, licence to sell food, and a sales tax number.

What unfolded in those 90 days was a comedy of obstacles. I could not register my startup to my residence address. I took the services of three people to expedite the process: a chartered accountant to work with the registrar of companies, the bank, the PAN card office, etc; a retired food entrepreneur to get the food safety licence and sales tax number; and a third person to work with the local panchayat, village and electricity office to produce all the documents required by the other two.

We decided to use a nearby cottage as the registered office. I got the paperwork completed in the panchayat, electricity office and primary health centre to make the place ready for commercial use.

#1Obstacle: The registrar didn't accept any address proof from the panchayat or village and only accepted a utility bill. The only utility bill I had was the electricity bill, which, for some reason, didn't have the address printed on it. We needed a letter from the electricity office confirming the address. On top of that I noticed that on the first line of the address was my sister's name!

The panchayat needed a house name to go with the house number, as the latter keeps changing. Someone in the panchayat picked up the house name from my passport, which still bears the address of my family house that my parents fondly named after their only daughter.

My liaison spent two weeks trying to convince the electricity office to issue a new letter without the house name. But there was no progress. In the third week, I went to the electricity office. The assistant engineer there recognised me. He wanted to know how a fruit growing in his backyard could be good for his health. By the time I had explained things, we had a new letter without my sister's name. The registrar rejected the first company name we gave it, but quickly approved the second name.

Registration process complete, I was waiting for the seed fund sanction letter. A postman called to say the registered letter has arrived and I needed to bring a company seal.

The next 'obstacle': the food safety licence. I was pleasantly surprised to get it till I saw the company name. It had the first name we had given to the registrar that he had rejected!

To expedite matters, my consultant had given the food licence application as soon we got the licence from panchayat - it needed the name of the company to issue the licence. So we had given the name we were going to apply to the registrar.

My consultant had to go through the motion of changing the company name in the panchayat and then in the food safety licence. The sanction letter arrived, the PAN card issued, bank account opened. And when we were all set to submit all documents required for the seed fund, the next obstacle showed up.

Since I didn't have a company when we started, all intellectual property (IP)-related to the brand is in my personal name. After my CA contacted my IP lawyer to complete the transfer, he called me back: if we transfer the IP now, I would end up paying more money in stamp duty and income tax than the seed fund! We concluded it's best to issue a licence to use the IP and wait till the company generated enough cash before transferring the IP.

Finally, after 90 days from getting approval, we submitted all documents to receive the seed fund. Dear prime minister, we have a lot to unobstacle. I hope on April 1, we will see a plan to herd together representatives from all departments into one room, portal or app, sorting out things between them and giving us the licences and registrations within a specific time-frame.

(The writer is former director, executive engagement, Microsoft India)